NEWS: Supermarket secrets
Well...as promised I watched the Dispatches show tonight called Supermarket Secrets on Channel 4.
I have never felt so sick in my life. We all suspect these sorts of things but figure if we ignore it then we can still eat this stuff and not be grossed out. Well no more for this man. I no longer trust the government to oversee the safe production of my food. Period! I am sure Mark Purdy would agree with me!
We already avoid ready meals and are trying to eat mostly unprocessed food as much as possible. Of course some times exceptions will be made...but the less the better!
OK where to begin? Some highlights of the show for you:
CHICKEN:
When buying a Chicken at a supermarket or anywhere for that matter check out the lower legs...if you see anything resembling the brown spots on the legs in the above image which is called a Hock Burn then put the Chicken down and leave the store. This is a clear sign that they do not care about the Chickens health or about your health.
The Hock burns may be less obvious...the above looks like an extreme example to me...sometimes they even remove the Hock burns before the chicken gets packaged so watch out for that.
A Hock Burn is caused because Chickens are grown so fast nowadays that their leg bones and tissue do not grow quickly enough and cannot support their weight.
The result is that the poor chicken ends up spending its final days (of its 6 week lifespan - which 30 years ago was double that I think they said) on the floor amongst all the Chicken poo which is full of Ammonia...which burns its skin...creating Hock Burns! Bleuch! Approximately 25,000 chickens to a barn equals a lot of poo to sit in!
READY MEALS:
This was a superbly done piece of investigative TV...basically some initial facts and images were offered but then the ultimate test. One of the worlds greatest chefs, Raymond Blanc was invited to examine a ready meal. He prepared and tasted it. His comments? 'A crime against Humanity! A crime against food! It's chemical!' Nuff said.
CONCLUSIONS:
Too many to list them all but basically:
1) Processed food is not good for you.
2) Intensive farming is producing fatter chickens than ever before.
3) The food production industry is exploiting the knowledge gap between food producers and consumers.
And that was just part one! Part two is next week on Monday at 8pm...make sure you do not miss it. For those of you not lucky enough to be able to catch this show check out the accompanying DISPATCHES: SUPERMARKET SECRETS micro-site at the Channel 4 website.
And check back next week for our take on part two of the report.
Thoughts?
Technorati tags:
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posted by City Hippy @ 9:30 PM
2 Comments:
I also saw that program and was equally appalled. Seeing 25,000 chickens crammed into a pitch black barn, unable to walk and in agony, knocked me sick. As did the laboratory experiment that extracted a pint of fat from a single chicken, 7 times more than it should have contained.
For the past year and a half I've been (almost) vegetarian, eating meat perhaps once every few months. And on those occasions when I do eat meat, I make sure it's organic, free-range and locally produced.
People need to be aware of just what it is they're putting into their bodies, and the atrocious conditions involved in the production of it. If more people were, maybe demand would force change.
Hi to both Dan and Coldflush
First of all thanks for your comments.
Dan the thing that really freaked me out was they way they 'seeded' those chicken sheds with the wee chicks just falling down that ramp into their new 'home'.
As visual an example ofthe commodification of life I have ever seen.
I agree that we need to focus more on what we fuel ourselves with. We care more about what we put in our cars than what we put in our bodies. Sadly.
I think more and more people are though and change is happening as a result. Witness the Organic and Fairtrade revolutions taking place.
Thanks for that link coldflush...only goes through to the main page for that micro-site so here is a shorter version of the link to that very good article.
http://tinyurl.com/75k5t
By the way...if you ever have a really long url and need to make it shorter etc then I recommend www.tinyurl.com - you put in a long url and it gives you a shorter version.
Namaste
CH
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